Reborn: From Nothing

2 years have passed since the trip to the capital. In this time Cassius had continued to grow very quickly. He now had a developed enough mind to begin his education. And his body developed quickly enough to begin swinging his dagger around while Julius and Marcus train.

His movements are disorderly and slow. Imitations of his older brothers. But I still sense something behind them. It may just be how sharp the dagger is, but the sound of a blade cutting through the air sends chills down my spine.

In this world, children are taught the art of combat when young. Cassius seems to be an exception even by their standards, but it’s still depressing. I grew up in a privileged nation. I don’t feel bad about that, nor did I really care about people suffering in some country I didn’t grow up in. It’s different seeing it with your own eyes.

Apparently, there was a deadly war not long ago, one that Marcus fought in for a long time. Come to think of it he is about 30 now I think? The war ended 9 years ago, but he fought for a while… Was he fighting before the age of 18?

Anyway, I don’t have much of an influence over Cassius. But if given the option I would have him run away from a war if possible. I don’t consider myself much of a patriot, I was proud to be an American, but I wouldn’t do something as stupid as die for the nation.

Today is the first day of his lessons. He is going to learn reading, writing, and magic from Claudia. Apparently, they start magic lessons at this age because there is a lot of benefit from learning young.

They walked to the familiar room of the study and sat down on a couch. The first lesson was sounding out words. I paid close attention to this, not like I’ll ever read a book or anything with my ghost hands.

I didn’t make much progress in the first lesson, which means Cassius didn’t either. Oh well, it’s the first lesson after all.

Writing was just learning to sign his name, and a few words like mom, dad, brother, sister, etc. Pretty boring, but I also paid attention to that.

The most interesting lesson was the last one. Magic lessons were all about channeling the magic within your body. For this lesson, Cassius meditated. I figured he wouldn’t be able to do this. Staying still was extremely challenging for him. But somehow, he did, and I could tell why. After a few minutes, I felt it too.

Something coursing through your body, not liquid, not warm or cold, not energy. Something else, something odd. But it was beautiful, after a moment I found myself meditating beside him and manipulating this aspect within myself.

No, it wasn’t within me. I was working with Cassius. Following along with his movements I activated magic alongside him. When I cooperated with him it grew stronger. At that moment I knew, this was how I could support him.

I would help him control and grow his magic. When he dagger trains, magic trains, or any other time magic can activate. I will focus alongside him, drawing out magic further.

It was in this moment of high magic activation that a look of shock appeared on Claudia’s face. Not a bad expression, but surprise.

“To think you would call forth this much magic on your first attempt. I was right, you are a genius…”

Cassius didn’t know what to say to this. Marcus who was watching outside stepped in. Claudia noticed him, but not either Cassius or me.

“He is huh, then we will emphasize his education further. So, he can become a true warrior.”

“I thought we weren’t going to raise him as a soldier.”

“To fight doesn’t make you a soldier Claudia. I realized this not long ago. It is when you kill others pointlessly that you become a soldier. When you fight for a good cause, you are a warrior.”

Cassius heard this conversation and made up his mind. He had spent his entire life until now listening to his father’s warrior philosophy. Of fighting for the weak, practicing minimalism, being kind, not yelling, not giving in, and pursuing strength selflessly.

To Cassius, his father was a superhero. A superhero he wanted to be someday.

“I will become a warrior, become strong, protect the weak, and one day I will walk alongside the progenitors.”

The progenitors of this world are religious figures. They were the sons and daughters of God who walked on this world during the turbulent period. There were four of them: the progenitor of wisdom, the progenitor of animals, the progenitor of man, and the progenitor of evil.

The progenitor of wisdom was an elf. He led his race to predominance in the world of old. They became masters of magic, philosophy, arts, and scholars.

The progenitor of animals lived alongside plants and farm animals in what was once a forest which we today call the unwalken lands.

The progenitor of man was a hero, he saved the world by playing the leading role in defeating the progenitor of evil. He also sealed the most powerful magic beasts away in the unwalken lands.

The progenitor of evil was a human who turned on the rest of the world and tried to destroy it. She corrupted all the animals within the forest creating magical beasts. Killed the progenitor of animals. Then fought the remaining two progenitors. Getting killed by the progenitor of man.

They are called the progenitors because they created the world as it is known today. They are believed to have been born from God. What is different in this world than my previous one, is that in this world you can become equals with the progenitors through magic and strength. This is believed.

“That’s my son.”

Marcus scratched his son’s head with pride. It has been decided that Cassius will be raised as a warrior. Not that Claudia or I like it much, but I can’t complain that he will learn to defend himself.

His father took to wholeheartedly teaching him techniques of sword and dagger. His mother oversaw his studies and meditation. His training partner most of the time was Julius who went easy on him.

…

It was a busy life starting halfway through his 4th year on this planet, but Cassius was a determined kid and worked hard to affirm the expectations set for him. Even at this young age he is working hard towards his dream. He is constantly impressing me. Frankly, I’m proud of him.

Three months of this training passed until it was decided Cassius could cast his first spell. Magic performed in a chaotic environment like a battlefield could significantly harm the caster. But with Claudia there and a calm environment, there is almost zero risk.

With Claudia on guard, and Marcus watching Cassius began the process of casting his own spell. It failed at first. His mana was all over the place, he was extremely anxious, and was obviously not visualizing anything.

I stepped in. At first, I only helped control his mana towards his fingertips. But eventually, I got caught up in envisioning the spell myself. If I were to try and create fire how would I? My first thought was the process in which people create fire in the wild, like sparking flint over wool. But that was out of the question immediately.

What even is fire? I knew the answer to this question. I took chemistry classes extremely seriously in college. This was because I had a dogshit professor who had an intensive class beyond belief for a gen-ed level course.

Maybe I should be thanking them because to this day I remember combustion clearly. It is an oxygen-based reaction which releases energy as well as CO2 and H2O. Therefore I will envision the simplest hydrocarbon possible, Methane as a 3d structure. Then draw oxygen from the atmosphere around me and break the carbon structure, forming new molecules in the palm of my hand.

The sensation of this was phenomenal, and at some point, it truly happened. Fire emerged before the palm of Cassius. A massive fireball burnt out immediately after I lost focus, but it was there. It wasn’t even the spell that Claudia taught him, but a brand new one from my design. I’ll try to understand the logic later, but for now… we did it!

Cassius performed his first spell with my help!

“Good job son!” Marcus was the first one to congratulate Cassius. With a firm pat on the back, he led him inside to celebrate. Claudia was frozen in place. It’s only natural, the spell she taught him was to shoot sparks from your hand by imagining hot iron sand. The process being extremely simple it would obviously not be very effective, but it would still be doable. However, what Cassius made was something beyond that, something special.

“Cassius… how did you do that?”

“I imagined dots in front of me! Then I formed them into new dots!”

Huh? Wait what?

How does he know the process? I was the one who did it?

Wait?

Could it be…

That shared consciousness goes both ways?

Could it really be the case that…

I can pass my knowledge on to him?

….

6 months have passed. I am beginning to understand the logic behind magic. First things first, the imagination is a mere guideline. The better understanding you have for a process the more clear the outcome will be. That is why the combustion reaction was so successful, but imagining an outcome through which there is no clear path is impossible. This was discovered when Cassius tried to turn a tree inside out.

Why did he try to do that, you may ask? I don’t know. But it’s clear to me that imagining the spell is the process that prevents completely impossible occurrences from being created from magic. You need to have some form of philosophical or scientific knowledge to cast spells. The depth of understanding is what creates ‘efficiency’ in magic. If you cast a fireball imagining through a lens of “what is hot is what is neither warm nor cold” your spell will work, but be much less efficient and effective than something like Cassius wields.

While I say the process which magic is cast through weeds out many impossibilities. The fact that extremely rudimentary understandings can still create outcomes is apparent. And things that were impossible in my world are possible in this one. The threshold of ‘impossible’ in this world is much farther than the threshold was in my world. So while you can’t turn a tree inside out from 20 meters away, you can heal wounds, you can put up an invisible barrier, you can enhance your strength, you can enhance your speed and stamina as well. Essentially, it can do what is not possible: as long as one has a plausible means to make it happen with backing in a real concept, as well as a magical capacity to cause it, and the focus to truly bring it about.

Healing magic under this logic is, therefore, more like ‘recovery magic’. But I will get into this further another day.

What matters is Cassius is growing stronger with magic at a much faster rate. Using a combination of my rudimentary knowledge of science and a basic application of logic his magical capabilities have grown. He can cast fire, water, air, and create earth to basic extents. He use the properties from those to cast slightly more complex spells like a shockwave, flamethrower, and create ice. The spells for launching earth projectiles are still beyond him, due to difficulty in understanding earth spells.

Despite this skill with magic, he is still far beneath the levels of Claudia, Marcus, Brennos, and Julius. Well, this is to be expected. He is just five years old at this point. However, I do have high hopes for him in the future.

The reading and writing lessons are making pretty good progress. He still needs help with almost all the words in a book, but he is starting to pick up a few.

The discrepancy between success in magic and success elsewhere is confusing the parents to a certain extent. Though they believed it to be not too far out of the ordinary.

His swordsmanship practice is… slower than the other things. This was anticipated by the family though, regardless of his comprehension skills, physical activity requires strength. Which he has not grown enough to possess. Though his forms are growing at about the same rate as his reading and writing.

Thus concluded the past 2 and a half years of his life. At the age of five, he learned to control basic magic on a complex level from my influence. Started the process of learning reading and writing. Began his sword training. And can comprehend conversation to a high enough degree.

I am excited to see him grow more. Watching and supporting him as he grows up is like having a child of my own. I think I have started to love this kid.